


Labradorite

by Jaydee_Faire



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Marijuana Use, Witchcraft, Witches, and homeschooling, talking animal friends, teenagers being teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 04:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12975420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydee_Faire/pseuds/Jaydee_Faire
Summary: An Asshole Monster Hunter/Order of the Wolfshead throwback: Adrian and Ashley look through his mom's apothecary shop for a recreational herb.





	Labradorite

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter @su1cidesauce

"Sorry about the way it smells in here."

"I dunno, I think it smells kind of good."

"Like a potpourri grenade to the face?"

"Like that shop at the mall that sells all the candles and shit."

Adrian snorted, ducking under a net bag full of garlic hanging from the ceiling. "Yeah, the one that makes your eyes water from fifteen feet away. I know she keeps it in here. All the other smells make it harder for the cops to find."

"Or you, probably." I lean over to tap the side of a glass jar filled with... something. Cloudy yellow liquid and some kind of dark coily thing. "I know you're always shitting all over it, but your mom's stuff is pretty cool. Bet you never got sick as a kid. Soon as you started sneezing, she could, like, poof! Magic the snot out of you."

"I didn't get sick often as a kid." He's face and elbows deep inside a large wooden chest, digging through paper packets of herbs. "But it was because I was homeschooled until seventh grade. Locked up in this place for years until someone finally convinced my mom that kids need to be able to play with other kids who don't stink of camphor."

"And?" I ask. "C'mon, Adrian, I know you want to keep bitching. It's your favorite hobby."

"S'not a hobby. It's an art form. I was about to tell you about how many times I heard the phrase 'son of a witch' that first year of regular-people school." He shuts the trunk and turns to an ornate looking box, covered in dusty swirls of silver. "And my mom refused to let me even leave the house without a protection charm, so I got to explain my pretty necklace to prospective friends. The only person who recognized it as Labradorite was the science teacher, and when I told him what it was for, he made this awful face at me."

"Angry?"

"No."

"Confused?"

"Not really."

"Show me. I wanna see the face."

Adrian looks up at me, annoyed, a cobweb dangling from one of his dark curls of hair. "Is that the face?" I ask, grinning. "Don't let all those years in drama club go to waste, Ade."

"All right, all right. Hold on." 

Adrian turns away, taking a breath, then turns back to me wearing the most perfect look of pity. I can't stop my snort of laughter, and Adrian's expression shifting to unamused irritation only makes it worse. "Go ahead, laugh at my pain," he sneers. "When I find my mom's weed stash I'm not sharing it with you."

"Cookiesh."

I startle, looking around. Adrian flinches, muttering a curse. "Hi, Monty," he mutters.

"Hiiiii, Monty!" The gravely, slurred words are coming from somewhere above us, among the larger jars of whatever that are stacked on the shelves against the walls. It takes me a moment to find the source: a scruffy black bird, turning its head to check me out with one shiny black eye. "Hiiii, Monty."

I stare at it. "What is that? A raven?"

"Monty's a crow," Adrian says wearily, holding out an arm. The bird flaps dustily down from its perch, landing ungracefully on Adrian's elbow before shuffling down to his wrist, head bobbing. "Technically he belongs to my mom, but he's sort of like a family member."

"You're shitting me. Your mom has a crow familiar? That's awesome!" I step closer. "Can I pet him?"

"Cookiesh," Monty tells me.

"Okay, first of all, you don't ask if you can 'pet' somebody's familiar," Adrian says. "And second, Monty's not a familiar. They're not really a thing anymore. It's just old witches who have them."

"But I thought--"

"It's complicated. Monty's a crow. He lives in the shop and eats weevils and he will definitely tell on us if we don't get him what he wants." Adrian scritches the bird's head. "He can be kind of an asshole that way."

I reach out to stroke Monty's ragged blue-black feathers. "What does he want?"

Monty puffs up contentedly under the attention. "Cookiesh."

"Three guesses," Adrian sighs. "There's a jar over there on the counter, will you get it open for him? Mom made it crow-proof a couple of years ago because someone was gorging himself sick on them, weren't they, you stupid fat bird?"

"Hiiiii!"

There's an old-fashioned cookie jar on the end of the cluttered counter. When I touch the rounded lid, I feel the weird hairy prickle of magic walking across my skin. I hesitate, but the lid comes off easily-- must only work on crows. Inside are a dozen or so mealy-looking cookies, not anything I'd want to eat but probably delicious looking to a crow who hung out in an apothecary shop all day. I fish one out, sliding the lid back into place.

Monty is watching me. "Two," he croaks.

"Greedy shit." Adrian jerks his chin at me. "Get two. And you can have 'em as soon as you tell me where mom keeps her weed."

"Cookiesh!"

"Weed," Adrian counters. "I know you know where it is."

Monty bobs twice, clicking his beak, then flaps across the room, coming to a clattering stop on top of a metal box marked 'TAX RECEIPTS.' Adrian throws his hands up. "Of course. Where wouldn't I bother looking? Good bird." He levers the lid open, emerging triumphant with a ziplock baggie.

"Cookiesh," Monty reminds him.

Adrian grins. "Of course. Pay the man. And a pleasure doing business with you, Monty."

**Author's Note:**

> "Asshole Monster Hunter" (real title: Order of the Wolfshead) is a project that I'm slowly chipping away at about a perpetually exhausted and broke girl in Ohio who has pink hair and a job making sure the less than human inhabitants of her midsize city behave themselves. 
> 
> All characters and the state of Ohio are (c) me.


End file.
